A Stranger In Your Shoes
by The Killer Bunny
Summary: Yukio finally realizes how much his brother changed after he was swallowed into Gehenna on the night their father died.


This is an AU if Rin was unable to pull open the sword and destroy the Gehenna gate, instead getting taken to Gehenna along with Shiro's corpse. I hope you enjoy this little oneshot!

* * *

He smelled the thick scent of blood before he opened the door.

Yukio opened the door to find his brother standing on the doorstep of their dorm building. He was covered in head to toe with gore and stink. It was rotten. Yukio could tell by the scent. When Rin walked into the light, he could see the blood had a blackish tint to it.

"You're not supposed to lock it," Rin said as he walked past Yukio, into the hallway.

"And you're not supposed to walk around in public covered in demon blood!" Yukio rushed for the door, looked around for anyone who may have followed, and closed it immediately, locking it and ignoring his brother's previous words. "Walking around like this in the middle of the night is just asking for exposure!" Yukio turned around and found that Rin was nowhere to be seen. The only evidence left that he was there at all were the bloody footprints and trail leading down the hall. It looked like Rin hadn't even stopped to listen to him.

Yukio frowned and stepped over the bloody stains, following them down the hallway.

It had been like this for months now. The night their father was killed by a combination of Satan and his own hand proved to be a night of dual loss. The Gehenna Gate doesn't let go of anything it grabs and it had grabbed Rin. Yukio still remembered the priests telling him how Rin had struggled and fought, how they tried to pull him free without falling in themselves, but in the end both he and Shiro Fujimoto's corpse were taken to Gehenna. Yukio had been in a shock for days. In a matter of minutes he had lost both members of his family. The priests had stayed with him, supporting him. It was about four days later, when Yukio was just beginning to accept his loss, that the priests rushed into his room and told him that Rin was at the door.

What Yukio saw after rushing down the stairs was not the fantasy he'd had of Rin returning with strong shoulders and a smile. It was undeniably his brother, but he was skinny and shaky. The kurikara was in his hands, gripped tightly with whitened knuckles. Yukio had only a moment to look over him. The tail curled up between his legs. The pointed ears. The pointed teeth. And then Rin lunged at him and pulled him into a tight embrace. Yukio had been scared stiff for several moments but then quickly returned it, holding on to his brother who had pretty much come back from the dead.

But that was the last happy moment they ever had. From the moment they separated from that embrace, Yukio became aware that Rin wasn't the same and never would be. He tried desperately to convince himself otherwise. Even when Rin had come to him and spoken to him about becoming an exorcist, even when Rin told him that he'd already spoken to Mephisto on the matter, even though there was just something so decidedly different about the way Rin carried himself, Yukio tried.

He never talked about it. Yukio stared at his brother's back as he peeled the blood soaked clothes from his torso. Rin never talked about Gehenna. All that he would say was that time flowed differently in there compared to Assiah. While in Assiah, he'd only been gone a couple days, Rin told Yukio that he had actually spent over a year in Gehenna.

A year in Gehenna… Though professionals still didn't know exactly what Gehenna consisted of, Yukio knew that no one could survive that and ever come out the same.

"Nii-san." Yukio watched as Rin gathered up the clothes in his arms.

"What is it, Yukio?" Rin looked at him. Even though he had a smile on his face, it just… wasn't right.

"Don't bother throwing those in with the dirty laundry. They need to be burned or else we'll have a hobgoblin infestation in a few days." Yukio crossed his arms, his shoulders tense.

Rin blinked twice. "Oh. Right. I guess that makes sense." He looked down at the clothes and grimaced. "Ah, what a waste…"

The bathroom was bathed in a blue light as the bundle of clothes in his arms were suddenly combusted and now burning brightly in Rin's arms. Yukio backpedaled into the hallway, reaching for his gun out of habit, but his hand colliding with the bare small of his back.

"Nii-san!" Yukio cried out in shock as he hurried back in the door. "You can't just use your flames so carelessly!"

"Huh?" Rin frowned, the bundle of burning clothes falling to pieces in cinders on the floor. "What are you talking about? I'm not being careless." As he spoke, the flames lowered in degree until there was a pile of ash on the floor, smoldering quietly. "Nothing else but the clothes got burned." Rin grumbled and grabbed a towel before heading to the shower.

"Dûzangann."

"What did you say?" Yukio frowned.

"Dûza-" Rin shook his head, stopping himself mid snap. "Go already. I'm gonna get clean." He growled slightly and shook his head before grabbing the basket with his toiletries and headed towards one of the shower heads.

Yukio frowned. "Are you sure you should be alone right now, Nii-san?"

"You don't have to babysit me." Rin grunted.

"Well maybe I do if you're walking around looking like that!" Yukio retorted with a sneer, gesturing to the blood still clinging to Rin's skin.

"I told you it's fine!" Rin glared at him. His voice was a low, guttural noise that rose from his chest and rumbled through the air. Yukio's chest clenched at the sound. He took a step back. He didn't feel safe.

"Fine." Yukio gathered up his strength and kept his expression stony and still. He tried not to think about the fact that Rin's bared teeth hadn't been as white as they should have. It seemed the sword wasn't the only weapon he'd used to defeat the demons he'd slaughtered.

Yukio walked out of the bathroom, his pulse racing far more quickly than he would have liked. He chided himself for it. He returned to their bedroom and sat at his desk, frowning at the tests he had yet to grade. He had stopped because, to be frank, grading his brother's tests made him uncomfortable.

100 points. There, written underneath his name in red pen. His brother had never been good at school. He never really got higher than a 30 point average on most tests. But Rin was more than acing in Demonology and Magic Circles. The teachers were singing high praises and hearing them in the faculty office made Yukio sick. He knew that Rin wasn't paying attention in class. He saw it himself. He heard Suguro constantly surprised how Rin managed to ace tests without a single scrap of notes. Yukio was glad none of them knew.

In the beginning, Rin got frustrated easily. Yukio had pegged it down as returning to school after he had decided to drop out. But his anger and frustration seemed to be more deep seated than that. After Kuro began living with them, the two of them began to go out at night quite often and when Yukio would ask, all Rin would tell him was that they were out hunting.

It was only when Rin returned without Kuro that he returned in that state of gore and filth.

The door opened and Yukio slid Rin's test to the bottom of the pile, instantly busying himself with the ungraded test at the top. Rin walked in, completely clean, hair still damp. He sat down at his desk and pulled a book in front of him. Yukio watched him through the corner of his eyes, inspected Rin's expression of distaste before he let his head hang back. Yukio swallowed once and returned his gaze back to the test.

"Where's Kuro?" he asked nonchalantly.

"Dunno. Still out." Rin leaned his chair on the back two legs as he stared at the ceiling. "I came back early because I had homework to do."

"How responsible of you," Yukio replied without much intonation.

Rin lifted his head and narrowed his eyes at him. "Hey, I've been doing good in school. What's your problem?"

Yukio sighed and lowered his pen. "I already told you what my problem was. You shouldn't be walking around the campus covered in blood, Nii-san. You'll cause a panic!" He turned in his chair and glared at him.

"It's night time!" Rin rolled his eyes. "I kept to the empty, dark spots. No one saw me."

"But what if they do!?" Yukio shook his head. "If people find out who you really are, consequences are sure to come. Honestly, that fight with Amaimon was close enough!"

"It wasn't close at all." Rin stood up. "I didn't even dent a single tree and got Amaimon to get off my back. No one saw a thing." He turned and walked towards the door.

"Where are you going now?" Yukio stood up to follow him.

"I'm gonna go out to find Kuro. I don't want to listen to your nagging anymore."

"Nii-san! Don't you care what happens to yo-" Yukio reached out and grabbed Rin's sleeve but the moment his fingers curled around the fabric, Rin grabbed his wrist.

Yukio gasped. Rin's thumb was braced under the bundle of carpal bones at the base of his hand. He could feel the bones threatening to disconnect with his wrist. He stared wide eyed as his wrist was twisted in the matter of a second and his brother's eyes flashed blue. But he was quickly released and Rin's expression slackened. Yukio brought his wrist close to his chest as one foot inched back. His guns were underneath his desk a few strides away. His chest hurt as he unconsciously recognized this fact.

Rin looked like he had read his mind. He closed his eyes and turned his back to him, reaching for the doorknob again.

"Nii-san." The word came unbidden from his mouth. This time, Rin stopped to listen. Yukio swallowed. The silence was pressing in on his throat but… the question was stronger.

"What happened to you in Gehenna?"

A line of tension formed on the back of Rin's shoulders and his fists clenched tightly.

"You…" Rin's voice was quiet. "You don't want to know."

Yukio watched as his brother walked out of the room. This time, he didn't move to stop him. His hand moved up to press lightly against his now aching wrist as his eyes fell to the floor.

He should just accept it. Yukio always wondered what happened to Rin in Gehenna. He wondered what could have happened to him that would have changed his brother so horribly, so completely. But now, as he remembered how close Rin had just been to pulling the bones of his wrist out of their socket with a flick of his thumb, he realized.

The brother he knew died in Gehenna and he never came back.


End file.
